Andrew Pickens

Andrew Pickens (13 September 1739-11 August 1817) was a commander of the South Carolina militia during the American Revolutionary War and later a member of the US House of Representatives from the 6th district of South Carolina from 4 March 1793 to 3 March 1795, preceding Samuel Earle.

Biography
Andrew Pickens was born on 13 September 1739 to a family of poor Scots-Irish and Huguenot immigrants in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The Pickens family searched for a home along the Great Wagon Road, initially settling in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia before settling in Waxhaws on the frontier of South Carolina. In 1764, he bought land in Abbeville County to raise cattle and to become a farmer, and he fought in the Anglo-Cherokee War against the rival Cherokee Nations tribes. Pickens rose to the rank of Brigadier-General in the patriots' South Carolina militia during the American Revolutionary War, and in 1779 he began a guerrilla war against the British under Henry Clinton and Charles Cornwallis in the South. At Cowpens, Augusta, and Fort Ninety-Six, he won victories against the occupying British forces, asking his troops at Cowpens to fire two rounds before they were permitted to retreat. Pickens served as a member of the House of Representatives from 1793 to 1795, and he died in 1817 at the age of 77.